ALEXANDRA SHULMAN'S NOTEBOOK: Posh is back - and it's all thanks to you, Nigella

Thank you, Nigella. After your universally acclaimed Bake Off debut, it's now OK to sound posh. 

The Marchioness of the Meringue beamed in from the baking tent last week and instantly shifted the dial on upper class accents, swinging the posh-o-meter wildly into the red.

In recent years, nobody has wanted to sound posh and as someone who does, I've long been aware it's something to temper. 

Not that my family were particularly upper class, but we were brought up with accents that veered more towards received pronunciation than Essex estuary.

Posh voices fell out of fashion decades ago, but that didn't stop them being highly desirable in the media. 

That changed over the past decade, when sounding even the slightest bit like the late Queen ruled you out of the running for any presenting job, with everyone having to drop 'h's and turn their 'ings' into 'ins'. 

Check out the difference between Claudia Winkleman's voice in the early years of her career and the tone she chooses for Traitors.

But now the unabashedly posh Nigella has appeared, all busty jumpsuits and ridiculously perfect complexion (incidentally something else she shares with the late Queen). 

Rather than fearing she might come across as ludicrous in the company of her fellow presenters who have more 'democratic' accents (as one mother of a friend would put it), she ramps it up for all she's got, her voice at once breathy and commanding, sprinkling her considerable vocabulary around the set like hundreds and thousands.

And we're loving it.

Nigella Lawson pictured alongside Paul Hollywood inside the Great British Bakeoff tent

We walked into a dystopian disaster

Waking up the day after a wedding, on a sunny Sunday morning in Buckinghamshire, I suggested to my husband that we went on a walk. I imagined an hour-long stroll over rolling meadows that would work off the full English we'd had, but no such luck.

It was close to impossible to find anywhere to go. Construction of the HS2 railway has torn up huge swathes of that landscape and, at every turn, we ran into dystopian looking vistas of concrete, tunnelling and devastation.

Any nice places to amble were overrun with hikers in high-viz vests and backpacks, marching as if they were on an Army training course. In the end we gave up and drove home to London to walk around the park.

Car lights made our journey impossible

Driving to the pub where we were staying the previous night we, like poor Jenni Murray, had awful problems with car lighting. The former Women's Hour host and Mail columnist died earlier this year after a crash caused by an oncoming car's dazzling headlights.

As we journeyed along the country roads, we were either completely blinded by lights or plunged into darkness. We couldn't find a way to put our car's beam on to a setting which illuminated without dazzling others.

It was once so simple. Lights on or off. Strong or normal. Now the array of lights on cars has made the business crazily complex, while the monster SUVs cruising with their glaring LED headlamps make night driving impossible.

I wish I hadn't given pencil skirts away

Miuccia Prada dedicated last week's Milan show to skirts. Every look was a different one. We're

not talking midis or maxis, but knee-length pencil skirts, which I'm a fan of – I wore one for my wedding in April.

This is fantastic news. The skirt has been lurking in the doldrums as fashion has nudged us into trousers and dresses. However, where Miuccia goes, the mainstream shops will follow.

I've already found a second-hand Prada skirt on clothing site Vestiaire, which I hope is winging its way to my wardrobe any minute. Only problem is I'm not sure it isn't one I donated to Oxfam when I had a wardrobe full of them.

Compelling Fauda hits the mark again

When I started watching the newly released fifth season of Netflix hit Fauda, about an Israeli undercover team, I was curious to see how they would manage

October 7. Given the current anti-Israeli sentiment, I thought it might not be shown. But it does tackle it and this season is every bit as complex and compelling as the previous four.

And the fact that the sister of the co-creator and lead actor Lior Raz was in her house hiding from Hamas terrorists on the day gives the show an added resonance.

Lose the vest, Tony, and put on a suit

Tony Blair has been photographed in a gym after sharing a workout with Indonesian senator Sultan Baktiar Najamudin.

I would rather eat tarmac than have a picture taken after a workout. But clearly Blair is proud of appearing in his vest and showing a nice set of biceps.

Do we really want to know that our figures of consequence are spending their time doing leg presses and competing over free weights? I'd rather they were sitting down and focusing on meaningful discussions that might make our world a safer place.

Tony Blair pictured at the gym gained significant social media attention over his buff arms

Kemi has nailed it in the style stakes

Kemi Badenoch mercifully shows no inclination to include us in her exercise regime and has nailed her Leader of the Opposition style. She wears tailored trouser suits and block colour sculpted dresses. It was heartening to see her front row at the M&S fashion show where she described her use of suits as 'hiding a multitude of sins'.

I've been trying to analyse why Kemi looks so good in what, on others, might be considered dull. Put another woman in her wardrobe and they would look pedestrian. But aside from making sure they fit perfectly, Kemi is, in the words of the French, etre bien dans sa peau – at ease with herself – and this shines through in her clothes.